Because they're a team of n people who can only do a certain amount of testing / are used to using the forums in a certain way. As soon as you release code to 100,000n you find all the holes, mistakes and preferences (and a lot of what I've read is to do with "what I'm used to" and "preference"). What makes the difference is being able to listen and make changes (although ﻿not﻿ knee-jerk, considered and by agreement).

I work as a software programmer. I won't say for whom, but the systems are financial, the numbers can be big and more importantly the room for mistakes and the resulting loss of reputation is zero. I will admit our user base is smaller, but our team isn't very large either, and we take care of a lot of systems.

No system is bug free, but there are ways and means to unit test code so that basic mistakes do not slip through. Do the team have any unit tests in place, or was it mostly or even entirely ad-hoc testing? To reduce the burden you should have some sort of web unit test framework and some real test cases. Which framework depends on what software you're using.

I agree that knee jerk reactions will do more harm than good.

Having done ﻿several﻿ of these big launches myself everything I'm hearing / seeing has been said before, and everything will be just fine in a few weeks time. As Simon said the forums was the last piece of my ﻿old creaky code﻿ and it was the biggest code liability (and also the most heavily used part of the site, by a long way).

I also maintain old codebases which will eventually shift so I understand the motivation. Major rewrites tend to take years.

With respect the backlash has not been this large or this univeral before. The board ignores this at their own peril.

For the record I wasn't consulted for the forums redesign, nor did I get a preview of it but overall I'd say the team have done a great job and I'm sure they'll address all the concerns aired in the next few weeks.

As I said a lot of effort, that is clear. But I don't think positive criticism means glossing over major problems. You can learn from them and move on but pretending BIG mistakes weren't made is not to anyone's advantage. I think the guys would still be patting each other on the back if no one complained and I"m sorry but the quality doesn't warrant that (YET...as I said it's still fixable). To be a little blunter a wake up call is needed here, not a huge "well done". There will be time to celebrate if the backlash dies down and the board grows rather than shrinks. Nor am I saying there should be no moral or pride in what has been done. Just that it's not time to celebrate when 2 out of 3 users based on this thread are telling you the changes are very bad.

So do your community bit and provide constructive criticism, but also show a little patience.

Would like nothing more than to see everything resolved within a few weeks. I gain nothing from this board's downfall and I will be the first to congratulate you guys if it all comes together.

Please take all of the above as intended - with sincerity. When I say the changes are bad, I am not saying the guys running the site or coding are bad. When I say the choices are bad it's because I want to see them fix the situation not because I want the site to die so I can have a laugh.